Make me a mix-tape...

You know I've been meaning to mention this cool mix-CD I got from the guy that runs Deviated Septum. If you go to his site you can view his Top Songs for 2002...and as an added bonus he'll send you a CD of 'em as well! All you have to do is send him a CD back of your own picks, or music you don't think he's heard or just nifty stuff like that.

So I'm going to do the same thing and make a CD with tracks from the albums I'm currently digging for trade with other like-minded folks looking to expand their musical knowledge. All you've gotta do is e-mail me and we'll exchange addresses and discs. How cool is that?

Once again, thanks to Kevin for the idea...

You know, if I could quite figure out how to exploit this template a little better I'd start adding permanent links on the sidebar to other stuff I dig so you wouldn't always have to slog through all my words.

That Ol' Black Magic done bit me in the ass again...

Also, I’m thinking of doing a spin-off blog from this one since Tankboy has been shamed into exercising his creative writing muscle a whole lot more after reading some stuff from a voice from his past. You see, waaaay back in the day I was a more logical sort of fellow. You know, the annoying prat who drops quotes by Sartre and tries to codify his surroundings while passing judgment on everyone else doing the exact same thing. In addition I was a frustrated art major dropout finding that drifting around various sub-cultures in the early ‘90’s was a very easy thing to do if one wanted to lose oneself.

Then this girl named Claudia popped into my life and taught me that I was a much better writer than painter (and strangely enough I taught her she was a much better painter than writer) and unleashed the, erm, rather more emotional side of me by forcing me to face up to the fact that a writer can’t be cut-off from their interior self. This might seem weird since writers are almost always displayed as voyeurs watching the world around them and writing their observations down but in reality this is hogwash. Yes the writer is an observer, but what good is observing if you have no context in which to fit your observations? Have you ever read a science journal? That’s how fiction would read without juxtaposing the connection of a writer’s inner world with the swirling teems that society forces us to wade through in day to day life.

I still like reading over some of my earliest stuff because it still has the rush of discovery and the absolute abandon that goes so far beyond the studied experimentation of most early voices. Well, as time passed I got better and better and then…I sort of stopped trying. With the exception of a brief burst when my heart was broken – which always seems to stir up the creative juices and kick out some dark comedies – my output trickled and whittled itself down to almost nothing. I sent out a weekly e-mail to friends, acquaintances and those interested in order to maintain brain muscle tone but I guess you could say I sort of lost the bug.

Well, let’s cue up to the present day when someone I hadn’t seen in years suddenly e-mails me to catch up on things and directs me towards some of her writing. Now this writing is sloppy at times and occasionally self-conscious but it beats and breathes and makes you forget its weaknesses…and it reminds me of why I started writing in the first place. So to that end I’ve decided to dig back in and take advantage of these newly re-tapped juices because I had forgotten just how much I enjoyed the thrill of words spilling out of me so quickly they just seem to place themselves wherever they belong.

I still don’t know how I’m going to channel this. I suppose I could set up another blog at some point to chronicle the fiction and keep this one unsullied making room for rants, reviews and foaming at the mouth. Or maybe I’ll just keep this new output to myself. It seems as if everyone has gotten in the habit of spilling everything out on the web and the prospect of keeping something a little private does appeal to me. Of course I’m also a junkie for criticism so I guess I'll probably end up leaning towards working out this new stuff out in public.

Damn, this entry turned out much different than I had intended (I just wanted to talk about mix-CDs for a second) so I’ll decide the format for future fictional output later. Right now I’ll just enjoy the feeling of actually being excited about exploring the inside of my head again.

Oh yeah, one more thing...

There's a movie about the whole '90's Brit-Pop thing coming out next month in the UK and the trailer for it is here. Naturally since I live in the U.S. of A. I'm going to have to wait eons to see it and in fact will probably have to wait until it comes out on DVD. Until then Liam's complete incoherence and Jarvis Cocker's archness will keep my interest up.

Thanks to my little bro for cluing me into this one.